


it feels like there's oceans between you and me

by chaoticamanda



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Campaign 2 (Critical Role), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friendship, Kidnapping, Kind-of, Pre-Relationship, Unresolved Romantic Tension, deep!jester, takes place vaguely during fjords arc, the traveler is not as innocent as he seems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-08 05:06:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17975012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaoticamanda/pseuds/chaoticamanda
Summary: Jester confesses to Fjord and finds solace in her room while she waits for his response.She waits.And she waits.No one comes to her door.





	it feels like there's oceans between you and me

Jester likes the water. Once upon a time she had fantasized about it, dreamed how it would feel lapping at her feet, but she never quite had the time to find out for herself. There was always an errand to run for Mama, the threat of being connected to the Ruby, the overwhelming number of new things distracting her every time she ventured from home. Since becoming a cleric, an adventurer, a pirate, she’s had a lot of experience with water.

It’s not as gentle as she’d thought. It’s always moving, churning with possibility, chaotic in a perfectly fluid way. When the sun is bright, the water is too, sparkling in every direction for as far as the eye can see. It seems warm and inviting and refreshing, until you lean over too far and feel the cold-water spray against your skin. At night, when the stars stretch on for miles and miles and meet nothing, its hard not to feel how empty it is. The churning is louder, untamable and unable to be ignored. It’s lonely.

Jester has an understanding of the water, in a way she thinks maybe Caduceus feels with his plants. She’s not crazy, she doesn’t talk to it or anything, but she feels like…like it can hold all her emptiness too, like her own waves are the ones clawing at the ship. She likes to sit at the bow of the ship and listen to the water. She hears it better than she ever did from her room in Nicodranas.

This is where Fjord finds her, when the sun has set but the moon is yet to rise, and the color of the clouds reminds her of Molly. Things have been off between them, though sometimes she wonders if they were ever really on. At first, she felt proud that she knew more about him than anyone else, but the more dangerous things became, the heavier those secrets hung around her shoulders. Even now, she is hunched over as he approaches, her sketchbook sitting cradled in her lap.

“Uh, hey, Jester,” He still talks like that man they have never found, “Mind if I sit for a minute?”

“Of course not,” impossibly, she makes herself smaller to make room for him, “This is your ship after all, Captain Tusktooth.”

“Heh,” Fjord huffs, a small smile curling at the edge of his lip, “I guess.”

Silence stretches out between them, strung together by all the words they’re both afraid to say. It feels like Jester has been keeping secrets her entire life, and in this moment, she feels her grip on some of them slipping. It is only the icy prickles of fear under her ribcage making her wonder if letting go would mean losing her first real friend that keep her secrets resting just behind her teeth. Fjord shifts, leaning his back against the wooden railing and looking up at the starless sky. “Listen, I…I just wanted to check in with you,” his words are careful, as if each syllable could trigger the trap they’re waiting for. He tilts his head, looking at her out of the corner of his eye, brow furrowed as he struggles to say what he wants to, “We’ve been through Hell lately, quite frankly. I want to know that you’re okay with, uh, the direction we’re goin’, because I sorta get the impression…you’re not.”

She doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t want to hold him back, and she loves their little group, but sometimes she feels like they have no idea what they’re getting into. Trouble can be fun, of course, but more often than not lately its been dangerous. There had been moments where she truly thought she would die. “What direction are we going in?” Jester grins, but it feels too stiff for even her lips.

Fjord narrows his eyes at her, turning his head fully now, “Don’t play dumb with me, Jes. I’m serious.”

The secrets in her mouth scuttle backwards and she has to swallow the lump in her throat when she sees the genuine way he is looking at her. “I’m okay, Fjord. I kind of miss home and Mama and Nugget’s probably, like, really big by now, but…”

Fjord nods, the crease in his forehead settling, “You don’t like the water?”

Jester sighs, letting her hand drift towards the sea, “The water isn’t the problem.”

“But there is a problem?” He sits forward and she gets the feeling that she’s finally triggered the trap.

“I didn’t say that.” Her voice is too quiet, almost lost in the lapping of the waves.

Fjord is silent for a moment, and she’s almost afraid to look at his face. Finally, he says, in the voice she had met him with, “I’ve never lied to you, Jester.”

“Never?” she squeaks, heart beginning to pound.

“Never,” there is nothing but conviction in the smooth flow of his voice, “because I trust you. With my life. And I am not saying that you have to…trust me, but please, at least be honest.”

She watches him speak, watches the way his throat bobs and lips twist. Distantly, the waves break. “Okay,” she says.

For a beat, nothing happens, and then she scrunches her eyes closed and pecks him on the lips. He must be able to feel her pulse through them, because its all she can hear in her ears. She peeks one eye open, because she hasn’t heard anything from him.

Fjord is frozen, a deep green spreading across his cheeks and the tips of his ears. The fear has crystallized under her ribs, rapidly spiraling up until her whole chest is cold. “Fjord?” She breathes, her face still close to his.

He blinks and pulls back abruptly, and it feels like a punch to the fucking gut. “Uh…”

“I’m sorry,” she blurts, and if she doesn’t say it now, she never will, “I didn’t want to say…I didn’t want anything to change. But honestly, I did kind of want something to change because, um, Fjord…I want _you.”_

Despite the hammering of her heart, the crashing of the waves, the ice trickling within her, there is a weight that lifts from her. One less thing no longer hidden in the shadows of her heart. She wonders what it would feel like if she let everything spill out.

“Jester…” Fjord’s voice is rough, scratchy. He lets her name trail off, running one of his hands through his hair.

The urge to hide, to downplay how much it matters to her, is overwhelming. She can’t help but hurry to say, “It’s okay. If you don’t feel the same. I just couldn’t, um, couldn’t hold it back anymore.” She wants to flee, to jump off the side of the ship and disappear into the stars. _Now, leave,_ her heart pounds, almost like that night in Nicodranas, _go!_

“I mean,” Fjord is still stunned, and he can’t look at her for more than a second straight, “I don’t—I didn’t realize…I didn’t think you felt like that. About me.”

“Oh,” She says, because it seems like he’s looking for a response. Truthfully, she thinks its crazy, because everyone else in their party has teased her about it at least once. How could he have been so oblivious?

“I…jeez, Jes, I’m not good with this stuff,” Fjord huffs, like he’s frustrated at himself, hair tugged a little tighter, “Can I…Can I think about what you said?”

“Sure,” her voice is almost as tight as his grip, her chest feeling stiff despite the rapid pounding threatening to shatter her. “How about…how about if you…if you decide that you think you think the same, come to my room, okay? And if you don’t…” the words do their best to stay inside her throat. “…then don’t come, and I will know, okay?”

She doesn’t give Fjord a chance to do much more than nod, clambering to her feet and toward the stairs that lead below deck. “Jester!” He calls after her, still sat on the creaking boards.

She turns, her fists clenched at her side, and he falters, “I…I’ll see you later, okay?”

“Okay,” she nods, trying to control the little flutter in her chest. 

She stumbles to her room, a far cry from her home in Nicodranas but a room she views as a safe haven nonetheless. She’s not an idiot. She knows that Caleb sometimes looks at her funny when she talks about her childhood, but truly she had felt safe. The four walls she spent her time nestled inside of were familiar, safe, _hers._ Though the room on the ship is small, a small cot tucked away from the door, she feels her shoulders droop as soon as she closes the door.

Jester leans against it for a few moments, her heart finally starting to slow, but her guts twisting like their own ouroboros. Her mind is a jumble of so many emotions and thoughts that she thought she’d understood, had mastered through osmosis rather than experience.

Taking a few deep breaths, she pulls her sketchbook out of the haversack and climbs onto her cot. Her paints are set in a neat row, a ritual she has never rushed no matter how upset she is. She flips through the previous few pages, before settling on a fresh one. The paint bleeds across the paper until only the expression of the blue tiefling sitting on her bed remains empty. Only time will tell if the tiefling will be happy or sad.

Jester waits when she has nothing left to paint.

She waits.

And she waits.

No one comes to her door.

Hours have to have passed before she truly decides to give up. Who was she kidding? Why would a handsome half-orc like Fjord want an inexperienced girl like her? What could she possibly offer him that Avantika could not have tripled?

The tears aren’t warm against her cheeks. No, like the grief branching through her chest, they are cool against her blue skin. This was something she had never realized was abnormal until her mother had wiped away her tears one afternoon. It was not often that Jester let her mother catch her crying, but sometimes there was nothing more she needed than her mother’s embrace. She felt like a child again—not because Fjord was rejecting her, but because he had been so surprised and caught off guard by it. Her mother had once had the same face when Jester told her about the only friend she ever had, who came and went as he pleased while her mother was busy.

She wishes for her mother’s embrace now, for the chance to say _you were right, mama._

Her mother is far, far away.

The Traveler is not.

Jester feels him before she realizes he’s there, curled up in her cot as she cries. There is a soothing warmth at her back, and she struggles to sit up, wiping her nose, “Oh, h-hello.”

“Jester.” His voice sounds like home and though she doesn’t forget her hurt, she remembers that it has been worse.

“I think I fucked up,” she says morosely, without preamble. Her voice is nasally, clogged with regret. “I think I ruined a friendship.”

“I doubt that,” The Traveler’s voice is steady, melodic, “I don’t think there’s a person on this plane you couldn’t turn a friend.”

“Traveler,” The tears are threatening to choke her again, tightening at the base of her throat, “I don’t know what I’m doing. Sometimes I think I should have stayed in Nicodranas. It hurts a lot out here.”

“You have been hurt,” The Traveler concedes, “but you have never been stronger. You find your strength in your pain—you always have.”

She remembers the nights she had cried in her little bed, begging anyone who would listen to let the door open, for her mama to come to her and spend time there. Sometimes it had felt like the Ruby was so far away that Jester would never feel her warm embrace again, even though they were on the same floor in the same building.

She remembers swallowing her tears and closing her eyes and _wishing_ for a friend so hard that He had been there when she’d opened them.

“I don’t know if I am strong enough to keep doing this,” she admits tearfully, “It doesn’t always feel…right.”

“How do you feel right now?” He asks.

She thinks. “Safe,” she answers, “because I know you wouldn’t let anything too bad happen.”

“That’s right,” his thin lips stretch wide beneath his hood, “I have always kept you safe, Jester, even if it didn’t seem like it. Do you trust me?”

“Of course,” she answers automatically, smearing the wetness on her cheeks across the back of her hand.

The Traveler takes her free hand, smoothing one cool thumb over the pale blue skin. “I think its time for you to come with me, Jester.”

Her brows furrow, confused, “Come with you?”

“Yes,” he nods patiently, “I think you are strong enough now, and I don’t want you to hurt anymore. You don’t need to.”

“But what about my friends?” Jester asks slowly, her eyes glancing to her door. There hasn’t been a sound behind it.

“Your friends,” he pauses carefully, “are the ones who have caused you all this hurt. If it were not for them, you would not be feeling so untethered.”

Jester swallows and stares at the door. If Fjord walks in right now, maybe it will have been worth it. Maybe love _could_ be worth it.

She knows that he won’t walk through that door. She knew how much he hid from the others and knew now how much he could hide from her, if he wanted. And if he wanted to come, to tell her the truth, he would have. “You’re right,” she whispers, another cool tear tracking down her face.

“Of course I am,” the Traveler squeezes her hand, “so what do you say? It’s time to make mischief elsewhere?”

The waves outside the boat, inside her heart, are crashing so loudly she can’t hear anything else for a moment. It’s chaos, a brand that she does not belong to. She doesn’t belong _here._

“Okay,” she whispers again, squeezing his hand back, and wiping away the last of her tears.

 

Fjord stands outside her door for a long time. Part of him had wanted to stop her as she’d walked below deck, but he was such a fucking _pussy._ She’d kissed him square on the lips and he’d just stared at her like an idiot. His heart had been hammering at her words, and it had felt _right._ But how could Jester want him? Some skinny half-orc who didn’t even have tusks? Who was probably beholden to some ancient sea monster? Who knew the most about him and still wanted to be his friend?

He wonders what Vanderin would think of him, standing outside a beautiful woman’s door blushing like an idiot. Probably, Vanderin would tell him to stop pussyfootin’ around and open that big dumb mouth of his and stop worryin’ so much. Probably.

But Vanderin was long gone, not even his echoes left on the sea, and Fjord was panicking. What if he had completely misheard her? What if she had just wanted to say that she always wanted to be his best friend?

Gods, he’s an idiot.

Fjord takes a deep, shaking breath and knocks on the wooden door. It’s solid against his fist, echoing down the hallway a little too loudly.

There’s no answer.

He tries again, anxiety beginning to frost in his lungs.

He doesn’t hear a sound behind the door, not even the creak of a bed. A few doors down, beau pokes her head out, “Everything okay?”

Fjord can feel the heat blooming across his cheeks again and coughs into his hand, “Uh, yeah. Jus’ tryin’ to…” he wracks his brain for excuse, “…uh, say goodnight to Jester.”

“Mhm,” Beau purses her lips, like she doesn’t believe him one fucking bit, “You sure that’s where she is? I thought she was chilling on the deck.”

She certainly wasn’t on the deck anymore, he knew that for sure. But why would she have left her room if she had asked him to meet her there? Had she changed her mind?  “I’m pretty sure she said she’d gotten her fill of the ocean breeze,” he winces, the words sound fake even to himself.

Beau rolls her eyes and enters the hallway, pushing past him and setting her hand on the iron handle. She tugs and then frowns, trying again.

“What?” Fjord asks, confused.

“It’s…” her face scrunches up in confusion as well, “It’s, like, locked or something. Or stuck. Won’t even move.”

“Do these doors even lock?” Fjord asked, scratching the back of his neck.

“It’s your ship, man,” Beau shrugs and then begins to grunt as she tries to force it open. “Okay, this is weird. Like, the wood’s not even budging at all.”

“Let me try,” he nudges her aside, apprehensiveness over Jester put aside. Now he’s just fucking curious.

It’s as Beau says—solid as steel.

Something feels wrong about it. It doesn’t make sense, why Jester would have magically locked herself inside her room after she had invited him there, why she hadn’t opened the door yet after all of their attempts at it.

“Beau,” his voice is quiet, “Can you kick it open or something?”

He’s grateful that Beau just nods, stepping back a few feet. She doesn’t ask him why or if he knows something, she just trusts him. He wonders briefly what she would think of his real voice, if hiding it would bother her.

Beau lands a solid kick at the door, which does not move. Frustrated, she swears and tries again, this time attacking it with a flurry of blows. It begins to splinter and finally the door is separated from its hinges.

It opens to an empty room.

Fjord’s stomach drops. “This is Jester’s room, right?”

Beau’s fists clench, and she nods, “Yeah. But…maybe she wasn’t here.”

“Right,” he says, numb. They search the rest of the rooms, gaining more members in their party as they methodically comb the ship until everyone is looking for her.

She’s gone.

Fjord still feels numb, but he can—it feels like there is a pendulum swinging in his chest, crackling with grief and anxiety. He doesn’t know what to do.

“Where could she be?” Caleb whispers sharply, his fists clenched. “There must be something we are missing.”

“Yeah, Jester,” Nott’s finger flex anxiously around her flask, “It’s like she just disappeared. Poof. Gone.”

Poof.

Gone.

Had she gone overboard?

The swaying of the ship makes Fjord sick as his mind is suddenly swarmed with the possibility of her falling into the hungry waters, being pulled down, screaming for help and swallowing salty water. He knows the harsh burn of the sea all too well.

That pendulum bursts, sending prickles of fear across his chest until it feels like he can’t breathe. What if she had accidentally teleported into the ocean? What if a harpy had swooped down and carried her away? What if she was just…gone?

When they had been kidnapped, when they had been back-to-back and some stupid dingy cell, Fjord had felt like a failure. So many times, before then and since then, Jester had been there for him, supported him. The best he could do was, what? Leave her face to face with a dragon? Sleep with the enemy? Gods, what had she thought of that? Had she wanted him all the way back then?

Guilt churns in Fjord’s stomach and he wonders if his vomit will still taste like saltwater. “Well,” Beau crosses her arms, leaning against the wall, “I _heard_ her go into that room. I was busy…doin’ monk stuff, but I remember thinking it was early for her to turn in.”

“There are…” Caleb swallows, frustration pursing his lips, “There are only so many things that can make a person just disappear like that.”

“Like what?” Beau demands, her fingers digging into her own arm, “What could do something while we’re in the middle of the fucking ocean? Who would even know where she was? Where would they even go?”

Caduceus exhales slowly, “Have we considered that maybe _she_ went somewhere?”

“She wouldn’t have left,” Fjord says through his teeth, trying to keep his voice steady. When the others look to him, he mumbles, “Not without sayin’ goodbye.”

 _She was waiting for me,_ he thinks. Then a worse thought occurs, _is she_ still _waiting for me?_ Was she somewhere alone, trying to keep up hope they would save her?

“Guys…” Yasha’s voice is quiet, but they all turn to listen to her, “I don’t…I don’t know if this is right, but…there _is_ someone who always knows where she is?”

Caduceus blinks, and Fjord’s mind is racing too fast for him to comprehend what he means. “Who?” Nott looks quickly between everyone’s faces, “You mean her god? The Traveler?”

Yasha nods, and Fjord truly feels fucking lost. The rocking of the waves is threatening to collapse him, wash him away. Why would the Traveler _take_ her?

“Yes, yes,” Caleb nods, “A god would certainly have the power to take someone away.”

“But why?” Fjord shakes his head, as if that could clear it.

“Perhaps she was…straying too far for his comfort,” Caleb shrugs, “I do not understand much about the relationship between the faithful and the worshipped. In fact, I do not know _anything_ about the Traveler, other than what Jester has told me.”

Great. So she’d been kidnapped by a god? In the middle of the ocean?

“Well, where do we start then?” Fjord blurts, each breath rough around the shards inside of him.

“What do you mean?” Beau asks, confused.

“Where do we start? To find her? To rescue her?”

“There hasn’t been a mystery yet that we haven’t solved,” Nott slurs, taking another swig. Nobody mentions that she is missing her other detective.

“We are already chasing one god,” Caleb sighs, “Why not another?”

“Sounds good to me,” Cadueceus smiles comfortably, “I’m sure the Mother wouldn’t mind offering a helping hand.”

“Okay,” Fjord nods, stepping back from the group. He’s still panicking, and all he can think to do in this moment is pray. He’s never prayed before, and he’s not sure how much it would yield from Uko’toa, but…that’s not who he want to hear him.

 _I’m coming, Jester,_ he thinks hard, _I told you I would see you and I will._ If he’s lucky, maybe she will hear it, wherever she is. If not this time, then however many more times it will take until they’re together again.


End file.
